[Bob Miller]

Appreciate the reply. This place is always intimidating to post in, because despite editing for over a decade, I am definitely not a professional working editor.

Regardless, here’s my setup:

Macbook Pro 15 inch, 2.66GHZ, 8GB ram, Spring 2010 model (I believe)
OS 10.6.7
Final Cut 7

I edit HD footage, typically from an HVX camera…sometimes from a DSLR. Typically 720p, sometimes 1080p. Don’t do a whole lot of compositing work. (Ie. I don’t mess with After Effects often.)

Someone mentioned a drobo…I gotta be honest, I still don’t understand raid and what “redundant” actually means in that sense…I’m thinking the best bet would to get a drobo or drobo like rack, stick a few drives on it and hook em all up to my laptop via SATA or once it happens: thunderbolt. Unfortunately, my laptop is equipped with neither.

My new idea is to tough it out another year until I get a new computer that has either of these. By then hopefully HD companies will come out with thunderbolt compatible stuff.

[Bob Miller]

Got it, thanks for the reply Shane.

It seems like that cheaper breakout box only does HDMI out, which figures, this HP monitor doesn’t do. It’s got DVI and Displayport…I’m *guessing* that an HDMI to DVI or Displayport would work, but I’m not sure if something gets lost in the translation there.